Dean Winchester's Guide to Hitchhiking
by Audra Rose
Summary: Dean knows how to hitch a ride. Written for the highwaymiles challenge on live journal.


Notes: This was writtenfor thehighwaymiles challenge on live journal. This is my first posting to Winchester's Guide to Hitchhiking

by Audra Rose

_Tip #1: Gain Sympathy. You'd be surprised what people will do if they feel sorry for you. _

He must have been eight the first time they hitched a ride with another family, or maybe even seven. Something like that, because he knows Sam was still staggering around on stupid baby legs; sometimes veering so close to the scattered campfires that Dean could barely breathe. Then he'd have to leave the game of flashlight tag with Dave and the other kids, calling "Time out!" and hauling Sam back to the tent.

He'd met Dave on the playground behind the registration building while Dad was inside getting a campsite, and for once Dad had let him play for awhile. It was the best day he could remember in a long time, because Dave was staying in a camper that had a TV, and Dave's mom had given them hotdogs and just laughed when Dean ate three of them. Even better than that, they all got to stay up late and "run off some steam" because Dave's family was going to give them a ride to Tucson in the morning and damned if Dave's dad was going to spend six hours in a van with fidgety kids.

"Do you want to play Ghost in the Graveyard?" Dave asked, and before Dean could say, no, let's play something else, he heard Sam wail. Dean could see him sitting in the circle of the lantern light outside Dave's camper, rubbing his eyes and getting dirt all over his face. Dean walked over there and tried to make Sam stand up.

"I think your little brother's getting tired," Dave's mom said, and she sounded pretty tired herself. "Why don't you go find your mom?" That last part came out sounding pretty irritated, even though she'd been so nice before, and Dean blurted it out before he could think.

"My mom died."

That made Dave's mom freeze, and Dean watched her eyes get a little shiny; watched the tired lines on her face relax like magic. Suddenly she was nice again, and just shook her head at him, ruffling his hair.

"Oh, sweetie."

She turned to look at Sam and now it didn't seem like she was looking disapprovingly at his bare feet and the kool-aid stain on his shirt anymore; she just lifted him up and held him the way Dean remembered his mom used to do. Dean felt hypnotized, watching, and all strange inside because even though it seemed weird to see someone else holding his brother, he thought someone i should /i be doing that for Sam, whispering against his sleepy face and making his serious little brother smile.

He'd never wanted to tell anyone about his mom before, wanted to keep her just for himself, but if it meant that someone big would snuggle Sam close and kiss his hair, then maybe Dean could share.

_Tip #2: Establish a good cover story._

It was the first time an exorcism had gone terribly, horribly wrong. Sam was staying with the pastor because for some reason eight years old for Sam was a lot younger than eight years old for Dean had been, but this time Dean was grateful for that. He wouldn't have wanted Sam to see their father slumped in the front seat of the Impala with his jacket streaked with blood, hissing in pain through the claw marks on his face and telling Dean through clenched teeth that the car was as dead as the demon they'd killed and that Dean needed to go get a tow truck from the garage in town rightfuckingnow.

"We don't usually pick up hitchhikers," the man in the front seat said, glancing at Dean in the rearview mirror while his wife pursed her lips like she didn't think they should have done it this time, either. Dean ignored her and took shallow breaths through his mouth, trying not to cry, because yeah, it hurt, but it didn't hurt i that /i much.

"You looked like you were having a hard time, though," the man continued. "You wipe out on your bike?"

Dean didn't even know how to ride a bike, but he nodded anyway, and said, "Yeah. Blew out a tire. On some glass," he added, for good measure, and tried to breathe without moving his ribs. The two little kids in the back seat with him just stared, one pair of blue eyes and one pair of brown, silent and wondering.

"We can go back for it, if you like," the man said, and Dean looked up in confusion.

"For your bike, son," the man said patiently, but the woman's eyes met his sharply and Dean hoped the scratches on his face looked like they were made by thorns instead of claws. He tried to smile but the split in his lip made that painful.

"Mom, he's bleeding on the seat," the little girl said.

"Where can we drop you?" the woman asked abruptly, and Dean swallowed.

"That gas station up there on the corner is fine," Dean said, and shivered a little.

The woman suddenly looked a little guilty. "We can take you to your house. You shouldn't be walking around like this."

"No," Dean said. "The gas station's good. I can call home from there."

"Your parents will come pick you up?" the woman asked, all deep concern now that he was seconds away from being no longer her problem.

Dean nodded and even remembered to thank them when he got out of the car. While he trudged toward the gas station's garage he didn't think about what it would be like to have parents he could call to come pick him up and a bike he'd get in trouble for wrecking. His ribs hurt, which was the only reason his breath hitched. At least Sam wasn't there to see it.

_Tip #3. If all else fails, you have to be willing to pay for your ride._

"Hey, you going toward Amarillo, mister?"

It was three days after his eighteenth birthday and they'd been at the truck stop for two hours. Meet me in Amarillo, his dad had written; a scribbled note on the back of a motel notepad with an address and a phone number scrawled beneath the words. Something he had to do first, Dad had said on his way out the door, and great, fine, but Amarillo was three hours away up the highway and he hadn't checked to see if Dean had any cash before he left.

Dean tried to look at it like it meant Dad had confidence in him and not that his father couldn't be bothered, but at this point it was hard to tell the difference. They'd gotten as far as the truck stop in Alton, but then their luck seemed to have dried up.

"What's in Amarillo?" the man drawled, leaning back in his chair, looking up at Dean from under a John Deere cap. There was something in his eyes that made the skin on Dean's neck crawl. "Must be something pretty important. You seem kinda anxious."

"We just need to get there," Dean said, setting his jaw. "You headed that way or not?"

"Could be. You got any money?"

Dean narrowed his eyes and shook his head once, harshly.

"Well, that's a problem. I'm not sure I've got enough room for both of you."

"Both... what the fuck are you talking about?"

The man nooded toward the counter where Sam sat hunched over a soda paid for with change Dean had scrounged from the bottom of his backpack. "Maybe your brother there should come out and take a look. Make sure there's enough room." He paused. "In my truck."

Dean looked back at Sam's gangly form, all arms and legs as he started to get some height, finally; looked at Sam's face that was still round along the jawline where he checked every day to see if he needed to start shaving yet, and Dean envisioned punching the man's grin into blood and loose teeth. Don'tyoufuckingtouch him, Dean wanted to say. Don'tevenlookathim.

But they'd been there for hours. And dad was waiting.

"I'll go." He said the words through gritted teeth. "I'll go look at your truck."

The man smiled, and raised his eyebrows so ridiculously that Dean would have laughed if he hadn't wanted to kill the guy. "Well, okay, then."

"Where you been?" Sam asked when Dean got back, all long-suffering adolescent attitude, objecting angrily when Dean downed the rest of Sam's soda in one long, gulping drink.

"Get your stuff. We've got a ride."

"It's about friggin' time," Sam muttered, but he picked up his duffel bag and followed Dean out to where the truck idled by the door.

"Stow the attitude," Dean told him. "And Sam."

"Yeah?"

"Don't talk to this guy. Just sleep or something. I mean it."

Whatever Sam saw in Dean's face cowed him for once.

"Okay, Dean."

_Tip #4: Be flexible about your destination. Sometimes you have to be patient and take the long way there._

Dean could have borrowed the car but as it was he was going to have a hard time getting his dad to forgive him, and he figured he'd better not push his luck. He got a ride from a trucker pulling a three-day cross-country, and he was in California just past noon.

It didn't take long to find the dorm Sam had been assigned to, and less time to talk his way up to the right floor, but Sam wasn't in the room when he got there. Sitting on Sam's bed staring at his brother's clothes piled on the floor and his posters on the wall, Dean felt uncomfortable. He didn't know Sam liked Coldplay. Hell, he didn't know Sam liked i posters /i .

A cheap CD player, huge Doc Martins, books, papers, a half-eaten candy bar unwrapped on the desk; all of it Sam's and all of it scattered around in a low-key chaos their father would never have allowed. Which was probably the point, Dean thought. It took him a few minutes to realize that he was sitting in the only space Sam had been able to claim as his own since he was six months old.

Dean thought about the spartan hotel room where he'd left his father sleeping, angry and outraged, with a note propped on the dresser and a pistol under his pillow. He looked up at Sam's posters again. Then he stood up, smoothing out the cheap quilt on the bed so Sam wouldn't know anyone had been there.

He decided not to leave a note.

_Tip #5. Never give up, because the car up the road could be the ride you've been waiting for._

"Hey. Come on. Wake up."

Sam's shoe is just short of gentle against Dean's thigh, and Dean automatically flinches away, sitting up straight on the curb and shaking his head.

"Fuck, Sam. What's going on?"

"We've got to haul ass. I got us a ride." Laughing down at him, insufferably smug, backlit by the streetlights in the Seven-Eleven parking lot.

Dean tries to get the cobwebs from his brain. "How far?"

"All the way to Rockford. We can pick up the alternator there and be back for the car by tomorrow night." Sam waits, practically bouncing, and Dean decides to be generous.

"Good job, Sammy," he says, standing up. "Didn't know you had it in you."

"Yeah, well watch and learn, big brother. You can't always wait for a ride to come to you."

"I'll keep that in mind," Dean says, but he follows Sam to the waiting car.

End.


End file.
